Cult of Jef

“I became an activist for gay ani­mals the day my dog com­mit­ted sui­cide,” says Suzanne Tuff, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor for Pride Tails, a non-profit that records the oral his­to­ries of homo­sex­ual ani­mals.  “We’re all expected to run with the pack; to stand alone and let our col­ors show only taunts dan­ger.  If only Spike had learned to play fetch like the other dogs …

“The trou­ble had begun ear­lier that year when our neigh­bor, Mrs. Arm­strong, paid Mama a visit.

“The trou­ble had begun ear­lier that year when our neigh­bor, Mrs. Arm­strong, paid Mama a vista.  She casu­ally men­tioned over cof­fee that Spike seemed rather light in the paws, so to speak, and, unlike her Great Dane, Duke, who was infa­mous bit­ing bicy­clists, dig­ging up flower beds, and gen­er­ously defe­cat­ing in the neigh­bors’ yards.”

Tuff said that her tan pug never barked at cars, chased cats, or dug holes in the lawn.  “Spike pre­ferred to lounge among the sum­mer dan­de­lions, rolling around on his back and expos­ing his soft belly to the world.  With his tiny, com­pressed snout, Spike wheezed with every breath; the sibi­lance gave the impres­sion that he barked with a lisp.  In addi­tion to being a friend to cats every­where, Spike allowed my lit­tle sis­ter and me to dress him in doll clothes and a long, blond wig.  He sat patiently in a tiny chair–tongue hang­ing out and pant­ing beneath the gold fringe–while Eliz­a­beth and I poured imag­i­nary tea into plas­tic cups.

“It seemed harm­less at the time …”

At her mother’s urg­ing, Tuff’s father enrolled her dog in obe­di­ence school to toughen him up and teach him dis­ci­pline.  “Spike pranced from his fel­low student’s hindquar­ters to another, sniff­ing butts with a dreamy expres­sion on his face.  His affa­ble per­son­al­ity and expres­sive curly tail only endeared him to the instruc­tor.  On his final report card, she sim­ply wrote–Adorable!”

When Tuff’s par­ents couldn’t change her dog’s behav­ior, they attempted to change his pre­sen­ta­tion with a stud­ded col­lar.  “Frankly, it only made him look gayer.  He used to admire him­self in Mama’s full-length mir­ror.  She even­tu­ally threw the col­lar away when a con­firmed bach­e­lor who lived two blocks over from us, told her that Spike looked like a mem­ber of an all-canine ver­sion of the Vil­lage People.

How­ever, it was a church scan­dal that was the straw that broke the camel’s back.  “Mama was a sure bet to be elected Pres­i­dent of the First Bap­tist Church Women’s Bible Brigade for trav­el­ing around to all of Dairy Queens in area to con­vert Pak­ista­nis to Christ.  Then Mrs. Arm­strong swung the vote after she tear­fully con­fessed that she went out to water her petu­nias and saw Spike try­ing to take Duke from behind.  The other mem­bers were so sym­pa­thetic that they didn’t pause to think about the fact that it wasn’t phys­i­cally pos­si­ble unless Spike had a step ladder.”

Tuff’s mother tried to rise above it, but a con­fronta­tion in the frozen foods sec­tion of the Pig­gly Wig­gly made her take action.  “As my mother reached into the freezer for a box of fish sticks, a lady wheeled her cart by and whis­pered, ‘Your Sodomite mutt is going to burn in Hell.”

Tuff’s par­ents argued over what to do.  “Mama told Daddy that Spike’s homo­sex­u­al­ity was an infec­tion that might spread to the rest of the fam­ily.  ‘Today the girls may play with Bar­bies, but tomor­row they may sport mul­lets and fall under the influ­ence of ladies’ pro­fes­sional golf!’  She gave Daddy a brochure for Rex Gay, an ex gay min­istry for dogs.”

Rex Gay, which is now under inves­ti­ga­tion by the Soci­ety for Prevention-Cruelty (SPCA), uses a stresses its use of hor­mone and praise ther­apy, but it’s their use of elec­troshock ther­apy that has been crit­i­cized and impli­cated in the deaths of a pair of stan­dard poo­dles, a Bor­der Col­lie, and a Chihuahua.

“As the order­lies were hook­ing Spike up to the elec­trodes, he bit them and man­aged to get away.  He raced out the door as another cou­ple came in with their St. Bernard.  As he raced across the park­ing lot to the busy inter­sec­tion, I called out to him.  He stopped and turned to me with those sad eyes that seem to say, ‘Give me dan­de­lions or give me death.’”  Tuff pauses and wipes the tears from her eyes.  “And then he leapt into the street and became a hood orna­ment for a minivan.”

Tuff no longer has any con­tact from her fam­ily.  She went off to Sarah Lawrence Col­lege and dropped out to begin record­ing the oral his­to­ries of gay pets that she met.  When asked about the value of these sto­ries, since they are actu­ally not in any lan­guage under­stood by humans, Tuff said.  “It’s not impor­tant that an animal’s story be under­stood, only that its bark or meow is heard.”